Giving Back through Early Head Start
How one former Head Start parent brought EHS to her community
Before Christy Vandergriff became Assistant Director of Program Operations at Sequatchie Valley Head Start in Tennessee, she was a single parent searching for work with an interest in early childhood education. With the support of Head Start, both personally and professionally, Christy has built a career in early education and is facilitating the same positive experience for another generation of children and families.
“I had gone to college but dropped out and I was a single mom with two kids, and I was working a factory job,” Christy reflected. “I was paying out as much in child care, when I was 19, [as I was making] at the little factory job.”
While in search of other work, Christy saw that Head Start was opening new home-based child care in her area. “They had gotten a grant here to help people get set up as a registered daycare home, so I filed an application and got in,” she said.
While operating the home child care for three years, Christy re-enrolled in college and balanced work with night classes. After a while, she was recruited to work at a center-based Head Start.
“My son Sam, who is [now] twenty-seven, went to Head Start and I went with him,” Christy said. “He was in my classroom, and I started out as a teacher aide.”
Through Head Start Christy met Judy Graham, the former director of Sequatchie Valley Head Start programs, who encouraged her to become involved with early childhood as a career.
In 1998, the Head Start program was expanding. After receiving her Associates degree in early childhood, Christy moved up to the position of classroom teacher. She later received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and went to work for the local school system’s pre-K program for a number of years.
“I did a lot of work for the Tennessee Early Childhood Training Alliance (TECTA), and I always had one foot still in Head Start,” Christy said. Along the way, she kept in touch and did a lot of training for Judy Graham, so when the Sequatchie Valley Head Start education manager retired in 2009, Graham called Christy to offer her the job.
“I love Head Start and I was very excited about coming back and being able to mentor new teachers and help them get their degrees.”
While Christy was already making an impact in early childhood education, it was her participation in the Fellows Program at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2014 that she says changed her life and brought Early Head Start to her community.
The Fellows Program helped participants like Christy think about management improvement plans. So, when there was a $500 million funding increase to expand Early Head Start in fiscal year 2014, Christy was inspired to advocate to bring Early Head Start to counties in her area. Understanding the potential impact of prenatal-3 services for their communities, Christy and two colleagues applied for an Early Head Start grant. “The three of us wrote the Early Head Start grant in a hotel and submitted it,” Christy said. “I had a gut feeling that we would get funded for it, and we did!”
In March of 2015, Christy began a $1.5 million dollar expansion project to bring Early Head Start to families in a four-county service area. “The hard part wasn’t writing the grant, it was when the money came in and you had to do it,” she said. “We were able to open four facilities and be fully enrolled in six months.”
Christy says she gets to see the impact of Early Head Start in action every day. “I love Early Head Start and working with those young moms and getting them the resources that they need for their families,” she said.
“We have a lot of single moms in our program. When I see them, I see me. I know what it’s like to be that person.”
Early Head Start and Head Start support families across the country and promote healthy development of the whole child and give parents and families the tools they need to achieve their goals. Christy’s is a prime example of how far Head Start’s support can help one go.
Early Head Start provides pregnant women, infants, and toddlers from at-risk backgrounds with high-quality education and care during the most rapid and influential period of a child’s brain development. To learn more about Early Head Start and explore topics critical to supporting our youngest learners, register for NHSA’s Early Head Start Rising webinar series here.
